Fifty Things That Aren't My Fault: Essays from the Grown-up Years - Hardcover

Introduction

I’m standing in the doorway of my closet, on the threshold of What Happens Next, clutching my last shred of personal power: a great big black trash bag into which I want to dump all my clothes.

Nothing fits.

I don’t mean “Ha-ha, nothing fits.” I mean nothing fits. This is worse than the hot pink bikini that destroyed my twenties in a fluorescent bulb-lit dressing room in a Royal Oak, Michigan, mall. Worse than the blue jeans that broke my heart in my thirties in a charming Santa Barbara denim shop stacked to the hand-hewn rafters with jeans for every female body in the universe except mine. Worse than the go-everywhere black dress upon which I spent a car payment in my forties that never went anywhere because the only time I ever got it zipped was five minutes before handing my Visa card to the hip L.A. salesperson who told me how hot I looked in it.

This is worse than all that. This is my whole life not fitting. My days are too short, my lists are too long. People aren’t where they’re supposed to be. Everything’s changing without my permission. Children are moving away, friends moving on, loved ones leaving the earth, muscles and skin tone not even pausing to wave farewell before deserting me—and after all I’ve done for them. Just when I think I can’t possibly stand one more goodbye, something or someone I thought would be here forever isn’t.

Everyone I know is in some version of a great big life shift. Right in the middle of people and things that are changing and disappearing way too fast. An unrequested rearrangement of everything in our personal worlds—as if there isn’t enough that feels out of our control right now in the big world. It’s unsettling and unnerving. And scary. Impossible to be everything to everyone, to reconcile all that’s different, and to keep track of ourselves along that way.

I grip the trash bag. I have an overwhelming, exhilarating need to get rid of things before any more leave on their own.

I stopped my life’s work of drawing a comic strip after thirty-four years when the first rumbles of big change in my own life made it impossible for me to hold the pen. My daughter was starting her senior year of high school and I panicked that her childhood was ending before I’d had a chance to be a mom. I wanted, for once in my life, to get to be a full-time mom like the new stay-at-home superstar moms I read about in magazines and also, if I’m completely honest, like the old-school housewife moms I watched on TV when I was growing up. I wanted to get to feel what it was like to make tomato soup in the middle of the day.

That same year, my parents were both approaching their nineties, and I also wanted, for once in my life, to get to be a full-time adult daughter like the patient, loving daughters I read about in books. Graciously, selflessly helping Mom and Dad glide into their twilight years.

None of this has gone as planned.

I became a full-time mom at the very moment my daughter decided to reject all input from anyone over age thirty.

I became a full-time daughter the moment my parents announced they would barricade the front door if I tried to bring in anyone or anything to assist them.

I got older, which I hadn’t factored in, and became even more obnoxious and belligerent than my child or my parents, incapable of even committing to exercising five minutes a day.

I thought that when I quit my job, the pace of all the change would slow down. But it didn’t. It sped up. Before I knew it, the year zoomed by, my daughter turned nineteen and moved to college, my parents turned ninety, and I turned into a bicoastal hoverer. Commuting between generations. Back and forth between Florida and California so often now, I spend the first few minutes of each morning trying to guess which coast I’m on before I open my eyes.

Which is why I’m standing here right now. Trash bag held high. I can control nothing else, but I can control this. I will stuff life as I knew it into this bag and get rid of it. All of it.

The delusional clothes . . . the useless beauty products . . . the plastic food containers with no lids. I will move on to the file cabinets . . . the bathroom cupboard . . . the storage room. I will shred and dump! Delete! Declutter! I will be a role model of clarity. I will do it for my family. I will do it for me. Create a future with absolutely nothing hot pink and strappy holding me back.

I open the garbage bag to stuff in my first triumphant “OUT!”

I reach into the closet and pull out a frayed T-shirt I haven’t worn since 1982.

I study it in my hand.

I think how cute it would look paired with an oversize linen shirt, beaded belt, and suede ankle boots. I remember seeing a kicky messenger bag online somewhere with tassels the exact same shade of teal as the faded flower logo on the right sleeve.

I refold the shirt and lay it back on the shelf.

I close the garbage bag.

I march into the kitchen and sit at the table. So many thoughts are stacking up in my head. Big changes . . . little tassels . . . hanging on . . . letting go . . .

I open my laptop to start typing.

Before I can unload the closets, I have to get rid of some of these words.

1.

Fifty Things That Aren’t My Fault

Am I allowed to eat a noodle? I stare at the menu on the wall behind the takeout counter and try to remember.

It used to be so simple.

Noodles were good because they were comfort food.

Then noodles were bad because they were fattening.

Then noodles were good because they were “pasta.”

Then noodles were bad because they were carbohydrates.

Then noodles were good because they were fiber.

Then noodles were bad because they were gluten.

Then noodles were good because they were “pho.”

Then noodles were bad because they were high glycemic.

Then noodles were good because they were comfort food.

Then what? I have six months of unread healthy-lifestyle magazines on my kitchen counter, which puts me six months behind on where the noodle stands.

Paralyzed at the takeout window.

I turn to the line of impatient people behind me and blurt out the one and only thing I am completely sure of at this moment in my grown-up life:

“It’s not my fault!”

Decades of fighting for emancipation from all sorts of things, and this is possibly the most liberating moment of all. I repeat it with more volume in case the irritated people toward the back of the line didn’t hear. Also, honestly, I just want to feel the words come out of my mouth again.

“It’s not my fault!”

The man behind me sighs, loud and exasperated. I turn and look him in the eye. Right in his scowling, unadorned male eye. Not one moment of his morning was spent on eyeliner like mine was, I note. No eye shadow, no mascara, no fine-line filler, no under-eye concealer. I look further. No eyebrow shaping no eyebrow tinting no pore minimizer no foundation no bronzer no blush no Botox no blow-dry no straightener no curling iron no root dye no wispy layers no highlights no ear jewelry chosen to match his outfit.

I stop at his neck. No need to move on to his outfit. In four seconds, I’ve already calculated that if I add up the hours, days, weeks, and years of his life starting from when he didn’t play dress-up at age three like I did until this moment in this line at this takeout counter, he’s had approximately eighteen thousand extra hours of time on earth to do all sorts of things that I haven’t. All of that is also not my fault.

“IT’S NOT MY FAULT!” I proclaim even louder, right at his non-lip-lined, non-lipsticked, non-lip-plumped lips.

He glares and takes a step backward. I turn back to the cashier, place a non-noodle order, and strut down the counter to pay.

Life is just different for girls.

Life is more time consuming.

Life is more complicated.

Life is overflowing with expectations and obligations that use up our time, energy, and spirit and leave us feeling exhausted, insecure, and alone.

And I Have Had It.

I dig through my ten-pound purse for my two-pound wallet.

It’s not my fault that my wallet contains one credit card and nineteen bonus club cards to stores in which I could get a discount if I could ever find the card.

Not my fault I have to carry the bonus club cards in my wallet because I didn’t get my phone number registered to the accounts.

Not my fault that when I try to register my phone number to the accounts, I’m told my user name already has a membership associated with it and that I have to enter the password, which I don’t remember and didn’t write down for fear of identity theft.

Not my fault that I haven’t reset my passwords, because that would involve checking my email to get the reset codes, and when I check my email, I have to face the little bold print on the upper right of the screen that says I have 7038 emails I haven’t answered.

The disgruntled gentleman who was behind me in the ordering line is now behind me in the paying line. I feel his eyes boring into me, his ungroomed eyebrows raised at the spectacle of the insides of my wallet and purse, which are dumped on the Pay Here counter. Again, I slowly turn to face him. His flat one-ounce, bonus-club-card-free wallet is gripped in his unmanicured fingers like a manly badge of superiority. Membership badge to a detail-free club to which a girl will never belong.

“IT’S NOT MY FAULT!!” I roar.

I drive home with the windows of self-righteousness wide open. I breathe in the possibility of innocence. Big, freeing gulps of it. I barrel past mini-mall eateries and jammed parking lots, a Los Angeles suburb full of people hungry for dinner and a taste of what just happened to me in the takeout line.

What just happened was the opposite of who I am.

I am from Dayton, Ohio, and Midland, Michigan: I apologize for holding up lines. I don’t scream in public or at strangers.

I am my mother’s daughter: I take personal responsibility for everything and everyone on the planet. I look for those I can help, not those I can blame.

I am a member of my generation: I proudly own all my life choices.

I’m of all that—the Midwest’s gracious values plus Mom’s deep sense of responsibility plus my generation’s triumphant empowerment. I’m courteous, compassionate, and personally accountable for every speck of everything.

But not today.

“IT’S NOT MY FAULT I WAS RAISED TO THINK EVERYTHING IS MY FAULT!” I yell out my wide-open window.

Hah!

I barrel down the road toward home, indignation rising up in me, soaring, pouring out of me like lyrics of the perfect songs I can never find on the car radio.

“It’s not my fault I can never find songs on the car radio because I haven’t had three hours to learn how to program the simplified digitized car radio menu screen!”

I’m on fire.

“It’s not my fault I just paid someone to make me a sandwich because it’s become too complicated to buy a loaf of bread!”

“Not my fault I drove to the takeout place in sweat pants because all my blue jeans hurt!”

“Not my fault the sweat pants also hurt because someone decided women’s workout wear should be clingy and sexy to show off the hot ‘after’ body, not the non-hot, actually-needs-to-work-out ‘before’ body!”

“Not my fault that women’s magazines have covers declaring we should embrace our beautiful natural curves, and sixteen articles inside on how to get skinny—and that even if I’m over it, I still need to spend hours and hours navigating the hypocrisy for my daughter!”

“Not my fault I can’t call my daughter on the $700 phone I bought her to discuss it because ‘voice is over’!”

“Not my fault that the man behind me at the takeout place will never understand because he never had to navigate any of the body issue contradictions for himself or his son!”

“Not my fault I’m thinking about that man again!”

It’s all right there as I scan the memory of him and imagine the different universes in which he and I live. The million tiny things between us that use up women’s waking hours, leaving us frustrated and frazzled, holding hands with frozen donuts at 11:00 p.m.

Men are the same size all day. They don’t have pre-breakfast, post-lunch, mid-afternoon, and after-dinner bodies requiring different wardrobes for each part of the day and phase of the moon.

Men are the same height all day. All the pants in a man’s closet are the same length because all the heels of their shoes are the same height. Men don’t spend one speck of their lives deciding how tall they’ll be before they commit to buying or hemming their pants. They don’t need six different styles of black pants in four different lengths to go with nine different heel heights of black shoes for fourteen different types of occasions.

Men are the same shape all day. They don’t need to decide which direction to mold which body parts before they put on clothes.

Men are the same age all day. Their faces are their faces.

When a man needs a white shirt, he buys a white shirt. A woman does a three-mall, six-department, two-hundred-style-fabric-cut-size-price-manufacturer, multi-dressing-room search. Ditto underwear. Ditto T-shirts. Ditto jeans. Ditto sweaters. Ditto socks. Ditto shoes. Ditto workout wear.

Ditto the worst of the worst . . .

When a man needs a swimsuit, he simply grabs trunks his size off the rack. A woman dives into the deep end, the vortex of insecurity. Eleven and a half months of dynamic, twenty-first-century female confidence building, all undone by a one-second peek at our beautiful natural curves in eleven inches of spandex under a fluorescent dressing room bulb.

It’s not my fault we’re still supposed to stuff ourselves into someone else’s version of what we should be because there are zero realistic alternatives!

IT’S NOT MY FAULT THAT THINGS THAT SHOULDN’T MATTER STILL MATTER, AND THAT EVEN THOUGH I HELPED PIONEER A GENERATION TO THINK COMPLETELY DIFFERENTLY, I’VE SOMEHOW RAISED A DAUGHTER WHO SOBS IN THE SWIMWEAR DEPARTMENT DRESSING ROOM JUST LIKE I DID—WITH ME STANDING RIGHT BESIDE HER!—HER SELF-ESTEEM CONSTRICTED BY A WHOLE NEW WORLD OF SASSY LITTLE STRAPS!

I turn down the wrong street on purpose so it will take me longer to get home.

There are support groups for the big problems. Unequal pay, unjust treatment, unfair practices, global inequality. Harassment. There are politicians, movements, organizations, public forums. There’s honor in raising one’s voice about the big problems.

There’s no honor in mentioning what happened last night with nine “100 Calorie Packs” of Mini Oreos. No one to put into perspective the thousand extra pressures, time saps, and mini confidence wreckers that added up all day and left me feeling so exhausted and useless and small at 9:00 p.m. and then so huge at 9:06 p.m. No sympathy for the minuscule things that prevent me from doing the big things. That stop me from gett...